TELEVISION REVIEW; The Case of the Swinging Detective

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.
To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems.
Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

One thing about Anna Lee, the Arts & Entertainment Network's new detective from the independent service London Weekend Television: no one is likely to confuse her with Miss Marple.

Played by Imogen Stubbs and based on a character from the novels of Liza Cody, Anna is in her sporadically swinging 20's, lives in the trendy Notting Hill section of London and drives a Sunbeam Alpine convertible that has seen better days. A former policewoman who found the force both too confining and too sexist, she has decided to be a private detective with the small, rather eccentric Brierly Security in Kensington. Anna and the unconventional adore each other.

Anna's new employer, already shaken by Anna's leather mini-miniskirt, is not reassured when she divulges tendencies on the job to get emotionally involved, fly off the handle and use excessive force. But Anna is determined to pull herself together, going so far as to quit smoking immediately before and after her jogging workouts. And, of course, with an eye to a series payoff, she wastes no time in proving herself on the job.

In tonight's two-hour "Headcase" story, a father well-connected in the Government's Home Office searches for his 16-year-old daughter, a mathematics prodigy. Viewers already know that she is in a mental institution after having had a violent seizure on the street. Trying to track her down, Anna interviews the girl's teachers, and discovers that one has recently died, leaving a teen-age son who becomes emotionally attached to Anna. The disturbed girl is found, but is then linked to the murder of a man in a seaside resort. Anna eventually sorts it all out, and moderately astute viewers will do the same in far less time. When it comes to ingenious plots, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple still wins easily.

But Anna, who has at least two more television shows coming up over the next couple of months, has her special charms, not least her passionate but impermanent affair with a poet who likes to travel to far-off places. And then there's her odd downstairs neighbor, a former wrestler who wears Blessed Virgin T-shirts while reveling in his bisexual social circles. The classically trained Miss Stubbs, described in an Arts & Entertainment bio as living in London with the director Trevor Nunn and their daughter, splendidly portrays an Anna who is thoroughly believable. It's just that this particular plot is not. ANNA LEE Headcase Arts & Entertainment, tonight at 9 Written by Andrew Davies from the novel by Liza Cody. Colin Bucksey, director; Sue Dirtwistle, producer. WITH: Imogen Stubbs (Anna Lee), Alan Howard (Mr. Hahn), Michael Bryant (Commander Brierly), Barbara Leigh-Hunt (Beryl), Ken Stott (Bernie), Kate Beckinsale (Thea Hahn), Brian Glover (Selwyn), Shirley Anne Field (Mrs. Westerman).

A version of this review appears in print on October 4, 1994, on Page C00018 of the National edition with the headline: TELEVISION REVIEW; The Case of the Swinging Detective. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe